


One Hit Wonder

by Major



Series: The Way Home [3]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Drama, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 17:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9134155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Major/pseuds/Major
Summary: Eric gets some creative pain management at The Hilltop.





	

The best thing for Eric after pulling him out of the burning house and slowing the blood flow from his leg injury at the infirmary was to get him to The Hilltop. Dr. Carson irrigated the wound, checked for damaged tissue and compartment syndrome, and put in stitches, but medicine was low. Eric felt most of it. He was on bed rest for the next few weeks to heal and get close monitoring while Dr. Carson checked him for signs of infection. The first few days there, Aaron watched Eric moan in his sleep and shift with gritted teeth during the day while downplaying the amount of pain he was in, and he felt hatred in a way he hadn't felt before.

They had to take down Negan. There was no other choice.

One of the occupants in the main house had generously lent their room to them while they were staying, so Eric could rest up and heal in a full-sized bed in a private room. It was incredibly kind. After Negan burned almost all of the mattresses in Alexandria, sleeping on one again felt like shopping for a hat and being bestowed with a crown. He expected Eric to be stuck on the infirmary bed and himself relegated to the floor beside him. A queen bed with a thick comforter and actual pillows was a surprise he could appreciate.

He even managed to sleep through the night for the first time in months the day before. It was a rare occurrence these days and required the alertness that he was trained with now to not be triggered, so he woke with a start when something loud hit the floor.

He reached for Eric automatically in the dark, but his side of the bed was empty. Alarm shot through him, and he shot up.

"Eric?"

Laughter wafted from the connecting bathroom, and relief soothed his panic. Light was spilling from the room, and he padded over in his pajamas (also lent to him since all of their clothes had gone up in flames) to investigate. Pushing the door open a crack revealed Eric sitting on the tiled floor. He wasn't alone. Sasha was sitting across from him with her back against the shower wall. A shampoo bottle had fallen in the tub. Before any other questions could arise, he was hit with a strong, if long forgotten, smell.

His eyes flicked to Eric's fingers and stared, unable to make sense of this particular 3:00 a.m. surprise.

Eric spotted him in the doorway and smiled up from the floor with bloodshot eyes. "Hi."

Sasha nodded in his direction.

It truly was the end times. He went back into the room to retrieve a pillow before returning. He sat next to Eric and pushed the pillow under him to elevate the injured leg. He squeezed his arm gratefully, but his eyes were foggy and smile detached. Aaron could hardly believe it.

"You are smoking pot."

"Don't tell Rick." The joint returned to his lips briefly for another puff, and he whispered to Sasha, "He's the sheriff."

She shook her head and reached over to take the joint as he offered it.

Aaron was still lost. "You volunteered for D.A.R.E."

He was having trouble connecting his Eric with the Drug Abuse Resistance Education pamphlets and buttons with the glassy-eyed one that smelled like weed.

"I still have my red shirt," Eric said, then reconsidered. "No, I don't. It burned. So did my Smokey the Bear shirt. _Only you can prevent wildfires_."

Eric snorted at the irony and leaned against his side, shoulders shaking in silent laughter until Sasha leaned forward to pass the joint back.

"You are high off your ass," Aaron assessed in awe. This was the guy who used to hand out free bookmarks at schools that said _don't do drugs_ and _just say no_. He once gave a speech to a Boy Scouts troop on the merits of a clean and sober life, called marijuana a gateway drug, and never said pot, only cannabis.

"It's not like I'm a crackhead." He took another hit and held it a moment before blowing the smoke out with a little cough. "My rep is clear. This is medicinal. I'm hurt."

"Your rep?" He wasn't sure if he was more amazed or horrified as Eric took another puff and slumped happily against him.

Sasha offered him the next hit after her turn, but he shook his head. If there was one thing he learned since the Saviors came on the scene, it was that he needed to be ready for anything at any given moment. That meant having full control of all of his faculties. Even if Eric's head was spaced out somewhere near Mars at the moment.

"Where did it come from?"

Sasha gave a small shrug. "A stoner guy, Juke, up here is growing it. I know that medicine being what it is, Eric could use it. In a way that wasn't just... the way Juke is using it."

She smiled, and Aaron smiled back. It was actually incredibly thoughtful.

Watching Eric suffer and not being able to do much of anything about it to relieve the pain had been eating at him nonstop. It even followed him into his dreams where Eric writhed in the distance but he couldn't move from his spot no matter how hard he tried. To see him get some real relief was a kindness he was determined to repay.

"Thank you."

She shrugged again, but he didn't think it was anything to shrug at.

"I can keep supplying the stuff while you're here. How long are you guys staying?"

Eric was quick to jump on the good prognosis since he hated being trapped to the bed all day long. "Dr. Carson says I can be up and around in a couple of weeks."

Sure, but that didn't account for any possible complications or physical therapy he might need to not just be up but functional. There were also other matters to consider.

"Rick and I haven't decided if we should pull a Maggie and say he died in the fire if it comes up," he explained. It was an ideal way to stay off Negan's radar, playing dead.

"No," Eric protested. "No one is pulling a Maggie. The last Maggie got Jane killed." He looked confused for a moment before amending, "Not that Maggie killed Jane. The Maggie-pulling got Jane killed. Does that make sense?"

"Nothing makes sense right now," Aaron assured him with a smile.

He used the time to catch up on what was going on at The Hilltop and how Maggie was doing since he'd spent the days since they arrived hyperfocused on Eric. He kept having dreams that his leg got infected and he turned into a roamer in the middle of the night, rolling over and biting him when Aaron tried to wake him up in the morning. It was almost enough to tempt him into accepting a hit and taking the edge off his anxiety.

Eric spent the time seemingly discovering Aaron's hair was curly for the first time. He kept pulling locks straight and watching it spring back down like the idea of curls had not previously occurred to him.

Eventually, they got a game of Anywhere But Here going. Sasha waxed poetic about the beach.

"What beach?"

"Any beach. I want sand and sun."

"I'd go with you," Eric volunteered, but Aaron shut that down with an amused glance.

"Not unless we scavenge some SPF 2,000," he teased, smiling as Eric looked down at their hands and twined their fingers together. "Last time we were on a beach, he forgot to reapply sunblock, and I went home with a human approximation of a fire truck."

Eric's sunburn had been so bad that he refused to leave the house until the redness had gone down enough to give his skin a human shade again.

Sasha had a good laugh through the smoke slipping from her lips. "Your turn."

Aaron considered it. He had taken the freedom to go where he wanted for granted. They all had. He saw more of the world than most in his volunteer work and travel for pleasure, but he found that he yearned more for a _when_ than a where. He wanted to go back when life was simple, when he was in danger because his work - the work he chose to do - put him in that position but the danger ended when he went home, when Eric was safe by default and not rarely, not only when luck was on their side. But they were high, and he didn't want to bring them down when the world did that job all on its own every day they woke up and organized a new strategy to make it to another dawn.

"I would go to Paris," he decided since it was easier and wasn't a lie. If the world was normal, he would still want to.

"Ah," Eric pat his arm sympathetically. "He always wanted to go and never went." He added in a stage whisper to Sasha, "I did."

"With another boyfriend. Not me."

"It's really overhyped. Wasn't even romantic," he soothed while shaking his head at Sasha and mouthing _I loved it_.

Sasha's eyes closed as she laughed. Aaron stared back at Eric's grin with disapproval and nudged him.

"What about you? Where would you go? Anywhere but here."

Eric pouted. "Father Gabriel's midnight mass. We missed it because of Negan's Christmas present to me." He tapped his leg. "Remind me to send a thank you note. I'd hate to be rude."

Sasha lost the edge of her smile, and Aaron didn't blame her. Eric hadn't been there when they were lined up on their knees and Glenn and Abraham went down. He wouldn't have been flippant about Negan in front of her if he had, even if it was a coping mechanism to deal with the fear he had injected into their day-to-day lives. He wondered now if part of the reason Sasha had put in the extra effort to help Eric was because Negan's name was on his injury, and she had it in her now to do anything and everything to counter him when she could.

"What is with you and midnight mass?" he asked to gear the conversation away from areas that were too sensitive to approach this late in a bathroom with a joint passing between them. "Did you convert? Did I blackout years of devout religious observation somewhere? Why did you want to go so badly?"

Eric shrugged, but his eyes clouded over. "Before, you know—Olivia was talking to me about how much she missed Christmas. And getting dressed up for midnight mass. Her family would go all out, decorate the house inside and out. They actually competed in their neighborhood; won the last three years before..." _Before_. "It's just. It was something..."

It was something he could have done to honor his friend.

Suddenly, the focus he had put into decorating their house and helping Father Gabriel organize the Christmas events made a lot more sense. There he'd been teasing him about his unusual enthusiasm for it when it had never been his thing before, and you know, they were both Jewish, and Eric had been putting up lights and gathering ornaments for the tree in the church so he could sit in one of the pews and wish Olivia a Merry Christmas in farewell. It would have been a better goodbye than she got.

Eric was looking at his lap, and Aaron's chest ached for him. All of them. They lost too much, and the losses kept coming.

He sighed and after a moment, leaned forward and took the joint from Sasha. He raised it up.

"To Olivia," he toasted and took a hit.

He could afford just the one even if it left him hitting his chest and coughing, and it got Eric's eyes up and lips curved into a smile. He chased Eric's smiles the way he chased his safety, hard to count on these days but a hell of a thing when he got it.

He passed it to Eric who passed it to Sasha, and with tribute to friends past, they played another round of anywhere but here.

"Vegas."

"Rome."

"A bakery."

But, really, with friends, relaxed in a rare moment of security and smiles, he was good with just being here.

**Author's Note:**

> A much less dire note to leave them on than in Holy Night. Happy New Year!


End file.
